According to Kevin Simler's essay called "Crony Beliefs," crony beliefs are beliefs that you have partly because you want to believe them. This article talks at length about how beliefs form and when things go wrong. Why does it seem like so many people end up believing things that end up serving their self-interest? In a political context, I'm sure it would be easy to find boatloads of evidence for this on both sides of the aisle.

However, taking a step back, some philosophers doubt that such a thing as "crony beliefs" could even exist. They argue as follows: if the sole aim of belief is truth—that is, to accurately model reality—then the only considerations that will be able to influence your beliefs are those that provide evidence that reality is a certain way. All sorts of personal reasons you may have towanta belief will not be able to assist you in actuallyforming这一信仰。这并不排除，如果你想成为一名共和党人，那么承诺只看福克斯新闻不会改变你的信仰。相反，你的信念之所以改变，只是因为你接触到了有助于你成为共和党人的“证据”。But that is a long ways from your political or personal desireby itself影响你的信仰。

我实际上是被这种推理所驱使的。在家试着这样做:想一个你真的、真的、真的想要拥有的信念，但已经考虑过了，就是不买。仅仅从这个欲望出发，试着让自己真的相信它。当然，不要只是提醒自己相信它的理由，而是看看你的欲望是否能说服你相信它更有可能是真的。对我来说，这根本说不通。

你觉得呢?

Check out the full article:http://www.meltingasphalt.com/crony-beliefs/